game preview: USC

Date/Time: Saturday, September 11; 10:30 PM

TV: FSN


History against the Trojans: 0-1

Last matchup: USC 52, UVA 7; 8-30-2008

Last week: UVA 34, Richmond 13; USC 49, Hawaii 36

Line: USC by 19.5

Opposing blogs: Conquest Chronicles

Injury report: none, but Rodney McLeod isn't on the depth chart

This week's uniform: white jersey, orange pants

USC season preview

Ever wonder what it's like to be a MAC school in the early season? Now's your chance. Saturday's game will played in a stadium called the Coliseum - fitting, because last week, against Richmond, we were the lions; this week, it's our turn to be the Christians.

HOW WE CAN WIN

- Near-perfection. That's basically what it boils down to. USC is "down" these days, which basically means they're at risk of having a season as poor as UVA's best of the decade. The horror. USC has its weaknesses, but everything in this section assumes that everything UVA does on Saturday is executed to the absolute pinnacle of their ability.

- Healthy Ras-I Dowling. It's a safe bet that UVA has a better defense than Hawaii, which fell outside the top 80 in just about everything last year. So if Ras-I is on the field, I won't sit up nights worrying about USC's receivers not named Ronald Johnson. Johnson is, essentially, a terrific possession receiver who can also stretch the field a bit (though if there's a play missing from the USC arsenal, it's probably the deep bomb) and it'll take a big, athletic corner like Dowling to keep him silent. Chase Minnifield is good but probably not good enough to shut down Johnson. But he and the rest of the secondary can handle the rest of the USC passing attack reasonably well if Dowling is on the field.

- Have a field day through the air. Establishing the ground game against Richmond was a lot of fun, but it won't consistently work here. This isn't I-AA anymore and USC's linebackers are too good to let UVA control the clock with Keith Payne and Perry Jones. The weak point of USC's defense is the secondary, which couldn't come up with a single turnover against Hawaii and let the Warriors sling the ball all over the field. The Warrior receivers had big, big days. Run the ball just enough to make USC respect the play-fake, and throw plenty of fade and curl routes to isolate USC's corners against UVA's receivers. If UVA wins, mark my words the receivers will have a lot of fancy stats to their credit.

HOW WE CAN LOSE

- Pretty much by not doing everything exactly right. Coming within two touchdowns would be a moral victory, but not an actual one.

- Same ol', same ol' on special teams. Last week was a special teams disaster: lousy punt coverage, two missed field goals because one kicker doesn't have the leg and the other doesn't have the accuracy, and a blown blocking assignment leading to a failed 2PC that was supposed to be a simple PAT. Ronald Johnson ran a punt back for a touchdown against Hawaii and he'll do so again if things don't shape up here. UVA simply can't afford to take points off the board or give up a lightning-strike touchdown.

- Lousy pass-blocking. I take it as a given that the running game won't be as productive as it was last week, and I do think Marc Verica has the ability to connect with his receivers for the necessary yardage. But not if the USC pass rush is in his grill all game. The Trojans will get their points, no doubt about it, so the one thing that can turn an upset into a loss or a loss into a blowout is poor pass-blocking. USC knows how to take advantage of crappy offensive lines and I'm still not convinced ours can hold up for a full 60 minutes.

HOW THE GAME WILL GO

Probably badly. The WhatIf simulator gives UVA less than a 20% chance of a win, which is actually better than I thought. (Two notes: the preseason simulator gave UVA a 5-7, 2-6 record, which is pretty fair. And WhatIf boasts of an 85% success rate in week 1, which is of debatable impressiveness when everyone was playing the closest patsy they could find.) Anyway, that 20% is a lot better than you might expect, but it's still in shocking upset territory. Which we all knew. Like I said, it would take near-perfect execution from start to finish to pull this one off. More likely is a three-touchdown blowout.

REST OF THE ACC

Duke @ Wake Forest, 12:00
Georgia Tech @ Kansas, 12:00
Virginia Tech vs. James Madison, 1:30
Florida State @ Oklahoma, 3:30
Clemson vs. Presbyterian, 3:30
Boston College vs. Kent State, 3:30
Miami @ Ohio State, 3:30
Maryland vs. Morgan State, 6:00
NC State at Central Florida, 7:30

weekend review

This continues to be much more fun after a win than a loss. So let's start with some news-ish things.

- As usual, two Mondays before a game, it's time to learn the when and where, and for Georgia Tech it'll be noon on Raycom. Suits me just fine.

- Mikell Simpson didn't practice on Sunday but did join the film session, which is plenty encouraging. I guess I'd put the odds at 50/50 he'll play against Maryland, which, any time a player doesn't even leave the field on his two feet let alone under his own power, that's as good as you can hope for.

The other interesting point from that article:

After kicking the ball out of bounds twice on kickoffs, Chris Hinkebein was replaced on kickoffs by Robert Randolph.

"It wasn't done to our satisfaction," the coach said. "Unfortunately, nobody's made it clear to us that we can have a preference."

That last sentence is straight out of Groh's very unique dialect of coach-speak, and translated it means: "Hinkebein pissed me off by kicking it out of bounds after I specifically told him not to do that again, but Randolph needs a gale-force tailwind to get the ball inside the 10." Ultimately the result is kind of the same either way; might as well stick with the guy who has the stronger leg.

- Some Vic Hall fluff. It might be that that hip pointer he suffered was the best thing that happened to the team all year. Hall's been a stand-up guy about this quarterback situation and ultimately, Sewell is probably the best man for the job anyway and needs his reps. With Hall at receiver we have a steady quarterbacking situation and finally someone who can get open for him to throw to besides Kris Burd every so often.

- Once again, winning leads to personal honors. Ras the Destroyer is your ACC DB of the week. I knew about the sack, the fumble, and the pick, and did not even notice the nine tackles. Normally it's bad news when a DB is your leading tackler, but this is mainly due to all those short passes that did not become longer runs. Goes back to that point I made yesterday about quality tackling that kept IU from converting any third downs. Dowling joins Matt Conrath and Robert Randolph as ACC honorees.

- Jerry Ratcliffe points out that the 536 yards our offense racked up were not only more than 150 more than either Ohio State (with super-recruit Terrelle Pryor at the helm) or Michigan (and wunderkind quarterback Tate Forcier) could manage against Indiana; they were also the most since Marques Hagans, Michael McGrew, Wali Lundy, Jason Snelling, et. al., posted 549 yards on the Tar Heels in a 56-24 blowout in 2004. Here are the stats from that one; Hagans needed just 10 completions to get 209 yards through the air.

- Looks like I'm not the only one who thinks a bowl game is back on the table.

Recruiting board gets a minor touch-up, although I'm not ready yet to put anyone back to blue status.

- Added is QB David Olson.

- Removed are LB Quayshawn Nealy and RB Khalek Shepherd, about whom nothing has been heard for months.

FWIW, which is nothing really, if I were to pick one name to put in the blue category, it'd be DT Johnathan Hankins, whose visit to Ohio State was some time ago and has not yet resulted in a commitment. It may be a little while before anyone goes back up there, though.

High schools.....

KEVIN PARKS: The standard two touchdowns - one on a run of 74 yards - in another West Rowan blowout.

RIJO WALKER: A nice day on offense: 10 catches for 140 yards. On defense? Not so much: Bethel got steamrolled, 67-35.

Also, the DeMatha/Good Counsel showdown turned out to be a doozy.

Here's a new feature for you. Just for fun, here's the transcript of the Monday press conference, and here are the best blurbs of Groh-speak from the whole affair:

- "The answer to many questions like that, Paul, is you certainly wouldn't say 'no.' So if it's not 'no' I guess it's 'yes' but how 'yes' it is..."

- "There is certain 'you shouldn't do's' in there but more or less you have to give 'em their head and let 'em make their decisions."

- "It seems that Chase Minnifield does not have the fair catch in his repertoire." (That's not Groh, that's the lead-in to a question, but it's still funny cuz it's true.)

And the official Circumstance count: 6.

Interesting times in the ACC this week. Every winning team - and one of the losing ones - scored 40-some points. Let's see how this week looked from the bloggy point of view.

- Virginia Poly took out a couple past upsets' worth of frustration on Boston College and housed them, 48-14. Gobbler Country hopes that wasn't the apex of the season, and further hopes the apex is next week against Georgia Tech. I totally could not agree more. Wouldn't a bell curve look great for VT's regular season? Some blowouts in the middle, with the season bookended by a pair of losses? Let's make this happen. BC Interruption, meanwhile, recognizes that when someone runs for 8.8 yards a carry, he becomes a verb.

- UNC got back on track, dealing with a I-AA opponent the way you're supposed to. Tar Heel Fan still thinks the offense kinda sucks anyway. Despite the 42 points.

- NC State joins Boston College in the got-smacked-down category. By Duke. I wouldn't know how that feels. At all. Nope. Not me. Not us. Anyway, YANCSTSB found out.

- Testudo Times hands out a fat stack of D's and F's, which you'd expect after losing to Wake Forest 42-32 in a game that wasn't even remotely as close as the score said. Also, they're almost as up in arms as UVA fans are about redshirt burning. And what true freshman jumped into the game for Maryland? Why, former UVA commit Caleb Porzel. And he went backwards: -2 yards on 3 carries.

(Side note: I wonder why we call it "burning the redshirt." That would imply you get rid of it, when in fact, you still have it available. Only by keeping the freshman on the sidelines do you get rid of the redshirt option.)

- Miami also clocked a I-AA opponent. OK.

- Georgia Tech beat Florida State in a pretty epic game with no defense. Final score: 49-44. I wanted to watch, I really did, but you see Michigan was on at the same time, and when either one of the top two are on, there will be no distractions. Unless they're on at the same time. That just sucks. Anyway, screw the game. From The Rumble Seat informs us that it's homecoming week at GT, and at GT, that means it's time for the Mini-500. I have some friends who graduated from GT who assure me that this event is hilarity wrapped up in hijinx wrapped up in awesomeness and topped with a WTF bow. I suppose that this is the sort of thing you'd expect at a school where The Ratio is something like 75/25 and therefore there are no women around to ask "just what are you idiots doing?" However, the '70s-era photograph of multiple grown-ass men in Beatles haircuts, power mustaches, Daisy Dukes, and high-top socks, careening down what passes for a hill in Atlanta and riding tricycles, confirms the description as accurate. I only wish I'd thought of this while in school myself. Granted, my event would have been over a shorter distance. But then I wouldn't have had to wait for snow in order to grab a refrigerator box and go careening down the hill in front of the bookstore parking garage.

Well, they can have their traditions. We have our own tradition to take care of this week. We call it Kicking Maryland's Ass. Let's not miss out.